Michel Platini has called on Fifa to ban for life anyone found guilty of
corruption at the world governing body’s potentially explosive disciplinary
hearing on Sunday.

Platini, the Uefa president who is widely seen as a future president of world football’s governing body, is in London for the Champions League final and spoke on Friday for the first time about the crisis which has left three of Fifa’s most senior figures – president Sepp Blatter, vice-president Jack Warner, and presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hamman – facing allegations of corruption at an ethics committee hearing in Zurich.

Platini said: “When you have evidence [of corruption] then finished, bye-bye, arrivederci. Until we have got the decision of the ethics committee or proof or evidence it is difficult to know that. I am here for the Champions League and then I will go to Zurich. The situation is complicated.

“When you are on the executive committee, you don’t know what degree of corruption there is among the people who sit on the committee with you. The people who are corrupt, they know who can be corruptible. They know I am incorruptible.”

Fifa’s presidential election, in which Blatter is taking on Hammam, is due to take place on Wednesday but may have to be postponed if either or both candidates are found guilty by the ethics committee.

Should the election be delayed, there are likely be calls for Platini to step up as an alternative candidate. Platini has just been re-elected as Uefa president and had been expected to see out a four-year term before standing for the Fifa job in 2015. Asked whether he might consider stepping up this year he said on Friday: “Never say never.”

Related Articles

But Platini added: “To not have elections you need three quarters of the [Fifa] assembly to say, ‘No elections’. But I think we will have elections.”

Platini has vowed to support Blatter if the presidential election goes ahead but said that Fifa should review the bidding process for hosting World Cups.

“We can try to have a new system for the bids,” he said, although he backed the decision to award the 2022 tournament to Qatar, provided it is moved to November and expanded so that other gulf states, including Bahrain and Dubai, become co-hosts.

The Football Association was so angered by the failure of England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup it has said it will abstain from voting in the presidential election, although it may review that decision if the election is rescheduled.

Despite that, FA chairman David Bernstein said on Friday it would consider mounting a bid to host the European Championship in 2020.